We successfully met the threat of Communism. Can we successfully meet the threat posed by GenAI?
By Dr. Jim Castagnera,Esq.
Karl Marx made some major miscalculations. Consequently, despite all the murder and mayhem brought about by Stalin and Mao in the cause of doctrinaire Marxism, the USSR collapsed in 1989-90 and the PRC is de jure Communist but de facto capitalist. According to Montgomery & Chirot, The Shape of the New (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2015) at 107-08, “Marx’s… error was to think that ruthless competition among capitalists would make it impossible for working-class wages to ever rise. It was true that there were periodic crises due to overproduction of certain key goods, declining profit, and the resulting speculative asset bubbles…. But each time , new technologies and new products increased productivity; higher demand for newly available goods and services then restabilized capitalist economies.”
The question foremost in my mind is whether this time it’s different… qualitatively different. Most sources that I have seen agree with my gut feeling that GenAI will eliminate far more jobs than it creates. And GenAI is not the only threat we face as a species. Climate change and over-population are conspiring to make significant segments of our globe increasingly uninhabitable. It never ceases to startle my students when I remind them that, when I was their age, the earth’s human population was less than half the 8 billion the planet presently strains to support. Our cities are becoming “standing-room-only” environments. “In some cases global warming is predicted to increase the area of deserts, which already cover a quarter of Earth. Human activities such as firewood gathering and the grazing of animals are also converting semiarid regions into deserts, a process known as desertification.” [National Geographic] The south is relentlessly pushing north, into the United States and into Europe, as equatorial economies collapse under population pressures.
And yet, some short-sighted world leaders are calling for more, not fewer people. Chinese and South Korean governments are encouraging their citizens to have more kids. No surprise that the Pope has joined the clamor for more kiddies; whether likeable or not, all Popes at heart are the same. These more-children policies intrigue me. In the case of national governments, I assume that calls for more kids reflect a lack of creativity where economic growth is concerned: the only idea in their bankrupt bureaucratic brains is increased population, be it via immigration and/or childbirth. As for the Pope, well, I’m sorry to say it this way: the more ignorant, impoverished, and superstitious Catholics in the world, the greater the Vatican’s power and influence. Too cynical? Not when tens of thousands of Catholic children have been molested down the decades because the Church allowed pedophiles to prosper in the priesthood. What could be more cynical than that?
In my view, the right course for public policy is to plan for a time in the not-too-distant future, when large populations of redundant citizens will have to be dealt with. This can come through fascist governments, such as the one Donito Trumpolini (my name for The Donald) seem to favor. Or it can come through an enlightened government in collaboration with pragmatic corporations. In the last century, “[c]ontrary to what Marx predicted, elites in [democratic] countries. including the owners of companies, grasped that if workers were kept at near-subsistence levels they would indeed have much motive to organize and resist, bringing the system down.” (Montgomery & Chirot at 108) It’s possible that the top one percent and the Fortune 1000 will grasp this again. The results could include a Universal Basic Income, decent healthcare coverage, decent housing stocks, and meaningful alternatives to traditional jobs.
Among those alternatives could be educational and work opportunities.
After WWII America created the greatest higher-education industry in the world, bar none. Today, we witness the struggle and, too often, demise of some splendid little liberal-arts colleges. I think it would be wonderful if these little gems could be turned toward serving a different portion of the population. Today, instead of warehousing our oldest citizens in stunningly expensive, crushingly bland nursing homes, where they wait to die, we could give them the choice of occupying vacant residence halls, from which they could attend college classes. As GenAI occupies more and more of the “job market,” displaced workers might also enjoy the opportunity to enhance and enrich their lives through free college classes.
As for work opportunities: Many things need to be done that don’t get done, due to the cockeyed nature of the so-called “free market.” Just walk the streets of Philadelphia or drive down almost any American highway. Simply cleaning up the unsightly trash could be a very worthy undertaking for interested citizens encouraged and guided by their government. Extrapolate this simple idea into the realm of more acute ecological crises… cleaning up the planet could be correlated with the concept of a UBI in order to do the jobs that the free market can’t accommodate, but which cry out to be done.
The alternative, if I’m right, is a not-so-brave new world in which roiling masses of disaffected and impoverished populations must be controlled by fascist regimes dominated by billionaires and multi-national corporations. The result of going down this path, ironically, may be the eventual triumph of Communism, belatedly vindicating Marx.
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